Uncle Sam Wants a Few Good Appointees

George W. Bush took the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2001, the first president elected in the 21st century. Unfortunately, relatively few members of his administration went to work that week, or in the weeks that followed.

In fact, 10 weeks into the new administration, only 25 of 485 full-time positions requiring Senate confirmation in Cabinet agencies or departments have been filled. The administration has officially nominated 18 other officials and announced an additional 91 nominations.

At this pace, it could be early next year--roughly 12 months after President Bush’s inauguration--before the president is firmly in control of the government.

Americans may be dismayed by the delays, but they should not be surprised. Since 1960, every president has taken longer and longer to complete the appointments process.

The delays reflect many factors, not the least of which is that the number of appointed positions has grown steadily over the decades. In 1961, for example, John F. Kennedy filled just 196 appointments in the Cabinet departments. Thirty years later, Bill Clinton had nearly 800 such jobs to fill. And these figures do not include the growing number of posts in the independent agencies, the advisory board positions and lesser political posts, which now number in the 5,000 range.

The review process has also grown more onerous and complex with each passing scandal. The number of forms has increased, as has the list of questions and disclosure requirements. And those questions now penetrate more deeply--some would say intrusively--into a broader range of personal issues than ever before.

The increasing complexity of the process is more than a bureaucratic nuisance. It also has reduced the number of talented Americans willing to accept the call to presidential service. Presidential recruiters report that it takes more calls to find candidates willing to subject themselves to the process and more work to keep candidates from bolting once the process begins.

A recent survey of top executives in the private sector, conducted for the Presidential Appointee Initiative, found that more than a fifth of those who had been offered a presidential appointment had turned it down.

What can be done? The staff and advisory board of the Presidential Appointee Initiative have developed a reform agenda to address the problems we’ve identified in the appointments process. We believe the recommendations we presented to the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee this week can yield dramatic improvements in the process and in the quality of people willing to enter public service.

The recommendations fall into three broad categories:

* Streamline the recruitment and nomination processes by creating a permanent Office of Presidential Personnel with authority to employ staff adequate to its needs; simplify and standardize the information-gathering forms used in the presidential appointments process; reduce the number of positions for which FBI full-field investigations are required; overhaul the financial disclosure and ethics requirements imposed on nominees; and index appointees’ salaries to changes in the consumer price index.

* Strengthen and stabilize the confirmation process by reducing the number of positions requiring Senate confirmation; limit the senators’ practice of holding up nominations; mandate a confirmation vote within 45 days of a nomination; and permit nominations to be sent from committee without a hearing.

* Reduce the number and layers of political appointees by one-third, and grant the president authority to thin senior management layers in all executive departments and agencies.

Nothing perhaps can quickly undo decades of deterioration of the appointments process. Overcoming that painful legacy and its harmful effects on the quality of citizen leadership in government will require a bipartisan effort to make public service more attractive.